Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is a composer whose popularity has grown and receded many times since he achieved fame with his trilogy of cantatas The Song of Hiawatha, which premiered in 1898. The Model Music Curriculum suggests listening to his Symphonic Variations on an African Air and possibly learning to sing the main melody, but this could also be a good introduction to starting to read a musical score. 

 

British musicologist Herbert Antcliffe commented: "To those who really wish to know Coleridge-Taylor... no single work of his will reveal him more fully." Here, we explore the work and the man behind the music.